MSc Nafise Eskandani
nafise.eskandani@de.abb.com
0000-0001-9761-6319
NEskandani

Wallstadter Str. 59
68526 Ladenburg, Germany

I am a PhD student at the Technical University of Darmstadt and an Associate Scientist at ABB Corporate Research Center. My research interests include Cloud Native Applications, Digital Twin, Software Architecture, and Software Engineering. Currently, I am working on programming models for decentralized and resilient systems.

Publications

1. AIware
   

   Towards AI for Software Systems

   Nafise Eskandani, Guido Salvaneschi

   In Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Conference on AI-Powered Software, AIware, 2024

   Abstract PDF

   Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is being adopted for a number of Software Engineering activities, mostly centering around coding, such as code generation, code comprehension, code reviews, test generation, and bug fixing. Other phases in the Software Engineering process have been less explored. In this paper, we argue that more investigation is needed on the support that GenAI can provide to the design, and operation of software systems, i.e., a number of crucial activities, beyond coding, that are necessary to successfully deliver and maintain software services. These include reasoning about architectural choices and dealing with third-party platforms.

   We discuss crucial aspects of AI for software systems. taking as a use case Function as a Service (FaaS).We present several challenges, including cold start delays, stateless functions, debugging complexities, and vendor lock-in and explore the potential of GenAI tools to mitigate FaaS challenges. Finally, we outline future research into the application of GenAI tools for the development and deployment of software systems.

2. ICPE
   

   Lightweight Kubernetes Distributions: A Performance Comparison of MicroK8s, K3s, K0s, and Microshift

   Heiko Koziolek, Nafise Eskandani

   In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering, ICPE, 2023

   Abstract PDF

   With containers becoming a prevalent method of software deployment, there is an increasing interest to use container orchestration frameworks not only in data centers, but also on resource-constrained hardware, such as Internet-of-Things devices, Edge gateways, or developer workstations. Consequently, software vendors have released several lightweight Kubernetes (K8s) distributions for container orchestration in the last few years, but it remains difficult for software developers to select an appropriate solution. Existing studies on lightweight K8s distribution performance tested only small workloads, showed inconclusive results, and did not cover recently released distributions. The contribution of this paper is a comparison of MicroK8s, k3s, k0s, and MicroShift, investigating their minimal resource usage as well as control plane and data plane performance in stress scenarios. While k3s and k0s showed by a small amount the highest control plane throughput and MicroShift showed the highest data plane throughput, usability, security, and maintainability are additional factors that drive the decision for an appropriate distribution.

3. JSS
   

   The Uphill Journey of FaaS in the Open-Source Community

   Nafise Eskandani, Guido Salvaneschi

   Journal of Systems and Software 198, 2023

   Abstract PDF

   Since its introduction in 2014 by Amazon, the Function as a Service (FaaS) model of serverless computing has set the expectation to fulfill the promise of on-demand, pay-as-you-go, infrastructure-independent processing, originally formulated by cloud computing. Yet, serverless applications are fundamentally different than traditional service-oriented software in that they pose specific performance (e.g., cold start), design (e.g., stateless), and development challenges (e.g., debugging). A growing number of cloud solutions have been continuously attempting to address each of these challenges as a result of the increasing popularity of FaaS. Yet, the characteristics of this model have been poorly understood; therefore, the challenges are poorly tackled. In this paper, we assess the state of FaaS in open-source community with a study on almost 2K real-world serverless applications. Our results show a jeopardized ecosystem, where, despite the hype of serverless solutions in the last years, a number of challenges remain untackled, especially concerning component reuse, support for software development, and flexibility among different platforms – resulting in arguably slow adoption of the FaaS model. We believe that addressing the issues discussed in this paper may help researchers shaping the next generation of cloud computing models.

4. ICSA SAIP
   

   TOSCA for Microservice Deployment in Distributed Control Systems: Experiences and Lessons Learned

   Heiko Koziolek, Rhaban Hark, Nafise Eskandani, Phuoc Sang Nguyen, Pablo Rodriguez

   In Companion Proceedings of 2023 IEEE 20th International Conference on Software Architecture, ICSA Companion, 2023

   Abstract PDF

   The OASIS TOSCA language provides means for specifying the deployment of microservices to cloud-platforms in a vendor-neutral way. Designed in a independent of any application domain, it needs to be tailored to the distributed control systems (DCS), which for example manage the automation in chemical refineries, renewables production, and mining applications. There is still a lack of experience reports applying OASIS TOSCA in real-world settings, therefore the benefits and drawbacks of using this technology are still not well understood. In this context, we designed a simple DCS consisting of several microservices modelled in TOSCA and implemented an according TOSCA orchestrator. We executed a case study deploying the microservices to an on-premise and a cloud-based Kubernetes environment. While TOSCA provides a sophisticated object-oriented language, we found a few specification gaps, challenges when creating portable service templates, and challenges for synchronizing TOSCA orchestrators with DCS engineering tools as well as container orchestrators. The adoption of TOSCA in the process automation domain thus requires more work on the specification and tools and remains a mid-term goal.

5. MSR
   

   The Wonderless Dataset for Serverless Computing

   Nafise Eskandani, Guido Salvaneschi

   In Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 18th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR, 2021

   Abstract PDF

   Function as a Service (FaaS) has grown in popularity in recent years, with an increasing number of applications following the Serverless computing model. Serverless computing supports out of the box autoscaling in a pay-as-you-go manner, letting developers focus on the application logic rather than worrying about resource management. With the increasing adoption of the this model, researchers have started studying a wide variety of aspects of Serverless computing, including communication, security, performance, and cost optimization. Yet, we still know very little of how Serverless computing is used in practice.

   In this paper, we introduce Wonderless, a novel dataset of open-source Serverless applications. Wonderless consists of 1,877 real-world Serverless applications extracted from GitHub, and it can be used as a data source for further research in the Serverless ecosystem, such as performance evaluation and software mining. To the best of our knowledge, Wonderless is currently the most diverse and largest dataset for research on Serverless computing.

6. OOPSLA
   ConSysT
   

   Rethinking Safe Consistency in Distributed Object-Oriented Programming

   Mirko Köhler, Nafise Eskandani, Pascal Weisenburger, Alessandro Margara, Guido Salvaneschi

   Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages 4 (OOPSLA), 2020

   Abstract PDF

   Large scale distributed systems require to embrace the trade off between consistency and availability, accepting lower levels of consistency to guarantee higher availability. Existing programming languages are, however, agnostic to this compromise, resulting in consistency guarantees that are the same for the whole application and are implicitly adopted from the middleware or hardcoded in configuration files.

   In this paper, we propose to integrate availability in the design of an object-oriented language, allowing developers to specify different consistency and isolation constraints in the same application at the granularity of single objects. We investigate how availability levels interact with object structure and define a type system that preserves correct program behavior. Our evaluation shows that our solution performs efficiently and improves the design of distributed applications.

7. FTfJP
   ConSysT
   

   ConSysT: Tunable, Safe Consistency Meets Object-Oriented Programming

   Mirko Köhler, Nafise Eskandani, Alessandro Margara, Guido Salvaneschi

   In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Formal Techniques for Java-Like Programs, FTfJP, 2020

   Abstract

   Data replication is essential in scenarios like geo-distributed datacenters, but poses challenges for data consistency. Developers adopt Strong consistency at the cost of performance or embrace Weak consistency and face a higher programming complexity. We argue that languages should associate consistency to data types. We present , a programming language and middleware that provides abstractions to specify consistency types, enabling mixing different consistency levels in the same application. Such mechanism is fully integrated with object-oriented programming and type system guarantees that different levels can only be mixed correctly.

8. SPLASH Companion
   ConSysT
   

   Distributed Object-Oriented Programming with Multiple Consistency Levels in ConSysT

   Nafise Eskandani, Mirko Köhler, Alessandro Margara, Guido Salvaneschi

   In Companion Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity, SPLASH Companion, 2019

   Abstract

   Data replication is essential in scenarios like geo-distributed datacenters and edge computing. Yet, it poses a challenge for data consistency. Developers either adopt high consistency at the detriment of performance or they embrace low consistency and face a much higher programming complexity. We argue that language abstractions should support associating the level of consistency to data types. We present ConSysT, a programming language and middleware that provides abstractions to specify consistency types, enabling mixing different consistency levels in the same application. Such mechanism is fully integrated with object-oriented programming and type system guarantees that different levels can be mixed only in a correct way.